8 March 2018

In celebration of the International Women’s Day today March 8, Variety has released its first International Women’s Impact Report.

The 50 women on this list are doing extraordinary things in Showbiz and featured on the list are our very own CEO of EbonyLife TV, Mo Abudu and Nollywood star Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde. Also, on the list are Lupita Nyong’o, Adele, Salma Hayek, Gal Gadot and more.

Abudu used her star-making springboard as the face of daytime talkie “Moments with Mo” to launch the EbonyLife empire, with a film production unit and upscale lifestyle TV network; she’s been dubbed the Oprah of Africa. “As a woman in a male-dominated industry, I’ve had to be strong, focused and relentless — and work twice as hard as the men around me,” she says. Determined to push for gender parity in the Nigerian biz, she estimates that nearly 80% of “key positions” at EbonyLife are filled by women. This year she’ll unveil a mentoring scheme to support the next generation of young women in film and broadcasting.

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde

Actress

With more than 300 acting credits to her name, Ekeinde is an icon of Nigeria’s prolific Nollywood film biz, although she says that, “at heart, I think I am an activist first.” An ambassador for the U.N.’s World Food Program and campaigner for Amnesty Intl., she’s used her big-screen platform to drive her humanitarian goals. Her next step is developing a film village in the former slave port of Badagry, where she wants young Nigerians to hone their filmmaking skills while learning about “our rights and future as Africans,” she says. “I continue to explore ways we truly can be liberated and prosperous.”

Lupita Nyong’o

Actress

Truly international, Nyong’o was born in Mexico, raised in Kenya and educated in the U.S. She appeared in MTV’s miniseries “Shuga” before her Oscar-winning turn in 2013’s “12 Years a Slave.” Beauty contracts and high-profile starring roles in “Star Wars” movies followed; more recently, she has spoken eloquently about how “Black Panther” imagines an Africa that was never colonized by others. “Wakanda is special because it was never colonized, so what we can see there for all of us is a re-imagining what would have been possible had Africa been allowed to realize itself for itself,” she told “The View.” “And that’s a beautiful place.”